23 October | EVERYONE
«For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.» Romans 6:23
As a child, I heard adults say, “You will pay for your deeds.” They were referring to punishment for disobedience. But what Paul is talking about in this verse, he does so in the sense of result or consequence, and not punishment. Some versions of the Bible use the word “payoff” and other use the word “wages.” A person works hard to finally get their wages. Wages or salary is the result of your work.
Paul presents sin as a ruthless and cruel employer who makes you work from dawn to dusk and who, in the end, gives you death as a salary. To properly understand the apostle’s message, it is important to understand what sin means. It is not simply a bad deed. Action is the result of a situation of estrangement from God. Sin is separation from God. When Adam and Eve sinned, before committing the act of disobedience, they turned away from God, abandoned Him, and approached the tree that God had told them not to touch. Disobedience was the result of separating oneself from God.
God is the source of life. He is life itself. As long as the first human beings remained at the Creator’s side, they would remain connected to the Source and live the full and abundant life for which He had created them. But they willingly turned away from the Father and, in doing so, turned away from life and entered the territory of death. Death was the natural result of the drifting apart from life.
All would be lost to man because of their disobedience, but Paul declares that God’s gift is eternal life in Christ. The new life that a person receives when they accept Jesus is a gift, a present. Pure grace. There is no human involvement. Man destroyed everything, but God rebuilt it, restored it, made it again.
New life in Christ is a gift offered to all.
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Have you noticed? Again, Paul puts more emphasis on salvation than on damnation, more on life than on death. Sin repays you with death; but God, through Jesus, gives you life. And besides, unlike death, it says it is eternal life. Sing “The Free Gift of God” (if possible, with your family).